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Published Jul 2013
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
About to turn thirty, Alice is the youngest of three daughters, and the black sheep of her family. Drawn to traveling in far-flung and often dangerous countries, she has never enjoyed the closeness with her father that her two older sisters have and has eschewed their more conventional career paths. She has left behind a failed relationship in London with the man she thought she might marry and is late to hear the news that her father is dying. She returns to the family home only just in time to say good-bye.
Daniel is called many things - "tramp", "bum", "lost." He hasn't had a roof over his head for almost thirty years, but he once had a steady job and a passionate love affair with a woman he's never forgotten. To him, the city of London has come to be like home in a way that no bricks and mortar dwelling ever was. He makes sculptures out of the objects he finds on his walks throughout the city - bits of string and scraps of paper, a child's hair tie, and a lost earring - and experiences synesthesia, a neurological condition which causes him to see words and individual letters of the alphabet as colors. But as he approaches his sixties his health is faltering, and he is kept alive by the knowledge of one thing - that he has a daughter somewhere in the world whom he has never been able to find.
A searching and inventive debut, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is a story about finding love in unexpected places, about rootlessness and homecoming, and the power of the ties that bind. It announces Sarah Butler as a major new talent for telling stories that are heart-wrenching, page-turning, and unforgettable.
"Butler's elegant prose - interspersed with thoughtful lists...makes this a moving debut." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Spare language and an atmosphere of foreboding will keep readers on tenterhooks. Whimsy and pathos, artfully melded. "- Kirkus
"Graceful and subtle… love, in all its shape-shifting complexity, is at the core of this novel...This is a thought- as well as emotion-provoking novel… It also sparkles with hope." - The Independent
"Increasingly suspenseful… a moving and satisfying debut." - The Daily Mail
"This poignant novel about fathers and daughters, homecoming and restlessness, is also a love letter to London… Butler has viewed the city in all its weathers and moods, and this shines through on every page... A moving, life-affirming debut."
- Marie Claire (UK)
"Heartbreaking and hopeful, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love crisscrosses London in a layered search for fathers and daughters, family and home. For anyone who has ever wondered where they belong, or to whom they belong - the answer can be found within Sarah Butler's tender debut novel." - Vanessa Diffenbaugh, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of Flowers
"If this weren't billed as a debut novel, one would never know it. Sarah Butler writes with the deftness and delicacy of a master storyteller, giving us a compassionate, achingly beautiful rendering of a father and daughter." - Hillary Jordan, bestselling author of Mudbound and When She Woke
This information about Ten Things I've Learnt About Love was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Butler is in her early thirties and lives in London. She runs Urban Words, a consultancy which develops literature and arts projects that explore and question our relationship to place. Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is her first novel and will be published in twelve languages around the world.
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